Core Concepts

Revisions

A revision is the foundation of a policy and tracks the changes to a policy over time, including written premium. The following revision states indicate whether the revision's information is in effect:

Committed The data associated with the revision is in effect and reportable

Open and Pending The data associated with the revision is in progress and, therefore, is neither in effect nor reportable

Archived The data associated with the revision was at one time in effect and is reportable

Policy Status

The policy status indicates the current state of the policy.

Policy

Active The policy may be in effect, depending upon if the associated revision is committed or not

Canceled The policy is not in effect

Cancellation Pending The policy is currently in effect but will not be as of a future date

Expired The policy was non-renewed and is not in effect

Quote or Application

Unsubmitted The agent has not submitted the quote or application to the carrier

Submitted The agent submitted the application to the carrier, but it is still being processed by underwriting

Rejected Underwriting rejected the application

Premium Calculation

Written, earned, and unearned premium are calculated on a daily basis. The calculation for determining earned premium is to divide the written premium by the number of days in the term.

Remember leap years have 366 days.

Standard Examples

A policy with a written premium of $365 earns $365/365 = $1.00 per day

A policy with a written premium of $700 earns $700/365 = $1.9178 per day

A policy with a written premium of $2,345 earns $2345/365 = $6.4246 per day

Endorsement Example

For endorsements, BriteCore sums the daily earned premium for the number of days each respective coverage premium was in effect:

A policy has a $3000 premium for 280 days out of the term, which means for 280 days the policy earned at the rate of $3000/365 = $8.2191 per day

The premium is reduced to $2000 for the remaining 85 days, which means for 85 days the policy earned at a rate of $2000/365 = $5.4794 per day

Premium Records

The premium record calculations display for each day the policy is in force. These calculations on accessed on the Accounts Receivable screen of every policy.

Sequential Written and Earned Premiums

Sequential premium calculations indicate how much written and earned premium the policy wrote or earned on a given calendar day.

Earned and Unearned Premium

The running total of earned and unearned premium on each calendar day.

Catch-Up Records

When a policy is issued after its effective date, the premium records must catch-up. The first record will be the sum of earned premium up to the date the policy was issued. For example, if the policy earns $1 per day but is issued 10 days after the effective date, the earned premium will show $10 of earned premium on its date of issuance.

End of Term

At the end of the term, the following is true:

The written sequential and earned premium equals the written premium

The unearned premium is 0

Examples

New business

The following is true in the above example:

The policy has a written premium of $1,105 (written premium column)

As of 8/25/16, the policy earned $69.69 (earned premium column)

The policy is earning $3.03 per day (earned sequential column)

The unearned premium is decreasing by $3.03 per day (unearned premium column)

The policy was issued late as there is a catch up record on 8/15/16. Even though the policy earned $3.03 per day, it was issued 13 days after its effective date. As such, on the day it was issued (8/15/16), it had already earned $39.39 of premium

Renewals

The following is true in the above example:

This policy renewed on 8/03/16 given the premium record row for that date. On that date, $650 worth of premium was written, an increase of $5 as indicated on the previous date's row. Also, on the previous date's row, the entire $655 of written premium was earned and the unearned premium was $0

On the previous term, the policy earned $1.78/$1.79 per day (due to rounding). At renewal, the policy earned $1.81 per day

Cancellations

The following is true in the above example:

The policy canceled on 8/05/2016

At cancellation, the written premium equals the earned premium. In order to balance those premiums, $1,324.71 in written premium was deducted

At cancellation, unearned premium is $0

Policy Change Log

Visible only to those with database access, the policy_change_log tracks changes to policies not specifically captured elsewhere. The information is then used for vendor or case-specific reporting. For example, to track submitted applications by agent the following query could be used:

Renewal Business

Converted Policies

BriteCore Processing

Information in this section applies to the processing of all policies (new business, renewal, and converted).

Emailing from an Individual Policy

General Information

An email can be sent directly from an individual policy at any time

The email can be sent to multiple recipients

The email can include multiple attachments but attachments are not required

The subject of the email defaults to the policy number and can be amended

If the sender has multiple emails on file in the Contacts module, he/she can choose which one to use as the sender and reply to. As such, users should verify their email address in the Contacts module prior to using this feature

The emails are sent immediately

A note is written when the email is sent

Sent emails do not show in the Policies > Processing > Pending Email. To research an email, a user must know information about the policy from which the email was sent

This feature is not a setting and is therefore available to all

Presently there are no permissions around this feature, which means any staff member who works with policies can send an email

FAQ

If an agent responds to the email, is his/her response added to the Notes section of the policy?Not presently.

Access a Policy

Click the Help link in the policy search to view all the ways to search for a policy.

Reinstate a Policy

Access the policy

Click Reinstate Policy

Follow the prompts

Non-Renew a Policy

Access the policy

Click Edit in the Renewal Status section

Select Non-Renewal

Select a reason

Enter a description to further describe the reason for non-renewal, if necessary

Rewrite a Policy

Notes

A policy can be rewritten only if it has been issued (committed)

The cancel date of the old policy will be the effective date of the new policy. To avoid this, cancel the old policy on the desired date then rewrite the policy

Once rewritten, you will be directed to the new policy

A link to the old policy will appear

All policy data will copy to the new policy

Any linked claims on the Accounts Receivable screen will no longer be linked

If the On rewrite, automatically transfer return premium to the newly rewritten policy setting is used, any return premium will automatically transfer to the new policy. Otherwise, navigate to the Return Premium Queue and transfer the return premium to the new policy

Actions

Within the policy, click Rewrite Policy

Select a Reason to cancel the old policy

Select a new policy number

Enter an Effective Date of the new policy

Click Done

Reinstate an Expired Policy

Purpose

Cases exist when an expired policy needs to have coverage reinstated:

To reinstate coverage without a gap, use the below workflow

To reinstate coverage with a gap, follow the [Rewrite a Policy][3] workflow

Setup

Enable the Setting

Navigate to Settings > Policies > Policy Lifecycle > Expiration

Check Allow expired policies to be reinstated

Update the Reinstatement Prompt, which is the prompt the underwriter/policy processor will see when reinstating the policy

Update Reinstatement Settings

Navigate to Settings > Policies > Policy Lifecycle > Reinstatement

Check Notice of Reinstatement if you would like to issue the notice when reinstating the expired policy

Checking this box will generate the notice for every reinstatement, not just reinstatements concerning expired policies

Click + to add Reinstatement Reasons, which will be selectable by the underwriter/policy processor when reinstating an expired policy

Click Save and Exit

Update the Notice of Reinstatement

Navigate to Settings > Deliverables

Locate the Notice of Reinstatement

Click the pencil

Add the {reinstatement_reason} and {reinstatement_description} HTML tags to the deliverable

{reinstatement_reason} will populate with the list of selectable reasons defined above

{reinstatement_description} will populate with the text the underwriter/policy processor types when reinstating a specific policy

Update Permissions

Contact IWS via a ticket to restrict which users can reinstate an expired policy

Use Custom Policy Numbering

This feature is still under construction.

Those with access may read PR 5077 and lib/policies/numbering.py for currently supported cases. To enable 7 digits counters in policy numbers, contact IWS. Engineers may read PR 6770 for more information.

Automatically Rewrite a Canceled Policy

A canceled policy can be automatically rewritten when payment is received. Those with access may read PR 4875.

An HTML tag {auto_rewrite_message} can be added to the Confirmation of Cancellation deliverable to inform the insured how much must be paid (estimated initial installment + remaining balance on old policy) in order to automatically renew the policy.

Track Agencies and Agents on a Policy

This feature, which allows an agency contact (i.e., agent) to be assigned to a policy, provides the ability to identify an individual contact without losing the ease of policy processing and reporting that comes with attaching agencies to policies. The assignment of a contact is for reference only to address customer-service related questions; the contact does not appear on the Declaration or other documents.

First Steps

This feature is for those who attach agencies to policies

Within the Contacts module, create agency contacts, such as agents or CSRs. If available, include the contact's email address to correspond with him/her electronically

Attach the contacts to the applicable agency

Enable the Setting

Navigate to Settings > Modules > Policies > Contacts

Check Specify Agency Contact

If the checkbox is disabled

Contact IWS

Navigate to Settings > Advanced

Search for show-agency-contact

Set to True

Usage

Navigate to a policy

After assigning the agency, select a contact from the Agency Contact dropdown

If an agency has no associated contacts, the Agency Contact dropdown will not appear

An agency contact is not required

The Agency Contact dropdown appears only within the Administrative Portal. That is, agents do not have access to the dropdown during quoting

If the contact has an email address, use the Email Information Related to Policy button to communicate with the contact via email

Reporting

To report against the agency contact, create a BriteData report using the Agency Contact data point

Archive or Delete a Revision

Manually archiving or deleting revisions should only be performed by project coordinators.

Notate the policy number

Navigate to the BriteCore Dashboard

Click Support Tools on the bottom toolbar

Click Archive Revisions

Enter the policy number

Click Find Revisions. All revisions for the policy will be listed

Click Archive Revision to archive the revision, which means its data will still be referenced in reports

Click Delete Revision to mark the revision as deleted, which means its data will be excluded from reports. In other words, a deleted revision is one that should have never occurred

Important notes

Already archived and open revisions will not have an Archive Revision button

The policy must have at least one active effective date revision. It can neither be archived nor deleted

Deleting a revision does not remove it from the system, it sets revisions.deleted=1 and revisions.revisionState='archived'

Deleting an open revision with a same-day pending revision will move the earlier pending revision back to committed

Deleting a revision with an associated payment will move the payment to a prior revision; archiving a revision, however, will retain the payment reference

FAQs

Can an agent update an insured's mailing/billing address from the Agent Portal?Yes, but only if the insured has one policy. If the insured has more than one policy with the carrier, he/she must contact underwriting.

When should I archive a policy?A policy should be archived when it should never appear in any reports. However, do not archive a policy on the same day it is canceled because the premium records need to balance overnight. If that occurs, unarchive the policy using the unarchive utility (BriteCore Dashboard > Utils (bottom left of screen) > Unarchive Records).

Why is the pro-rata premium higher than the policy annual premium?A fully earned item was removed mid-term via an endorsement. For example, snowmobile coverage is fully earned. If the snowmobile is removed from the policy mid-term, its earned premium will remain.

The form was changed mid-term. The prior form had line item(s) that do not apply to the new form but earned premium while the prior form was in effect.

When rating a policy, a popup states two sublines or line items are on a policy even though only one appears on the screen. What does this mean?This can occur when using calculation line items, which are hidden from the screen. The calculation line item generating the error should have manual set to 1 in the property_items table. Submit a ticket to IWS to complete this task.

Can I commit a revision when the policy is Canceled?No, revisions cannot be committed while a policy is canceled.

Can I commit a revision when the policy is in Cancellation Pending or Cancellation Pending, Non-Payment of Premium?Yes, but it should be avoided whenever possible because the Declaration is not automatically created, billing may be adversely affected with a mid-term endorsement (e.g., an extra non-pay will generate), and the policy status will revert to Active with an effective date endorsement. The best practice is to accept payment prior to committing (issuing) the endorsement. If an endorsement is required (e.g., the mortgagee needs to be changed), the Declaration must be manually created using the Custom Deliverable button.

Can I endorse a policy that has a canceled revision?No, once a policy has a revision that is canceled, an endorsement cannot be performed. This is true even if the canceled revision is in the future.

I am receiving a _settle_batch_and_runtsr Nightly Processing Error, what should I do?Submit a ticket to IWS. Notate whether you recently switched payment vendors in BriteCore. See ticket 37149 for more information (IWS only).

More Information

Shell Tools

Policies Section

change_datedelete_all_policiesdelete_policydelete_policy_termdelete_propertydropbox_uploadexpire_policy sets a revision to expired. See PR 4215.make_new_revisionmodify_policy_search_indexmodify_property_search_indexnxtech_certificationdelete_revisionset_policyswitch_agenciesupdate_fire_district_selectionsvoid_revision